On the one hand, Endpoint Security Protection is a term often used in defending endpoints — devices that connect to a network, like laptops and smartphones — from attack. On the other hand, Endpoint Security can also involve blocking dangerous user behavior that could result in the endpoint devices becoming compromised or infected with malware or other infectious file viruses.
It’s worth mentioning that Cybersecurity is a topology that helps protect networks, applications, confidential or sensitive data, and users from cyber attacks. Cyber attacks are malicious attempts by individuals or groups to gain unauthorized access to computer systems, networks, and devices to steal information, disrupt operations, or launch more significant attacks.
Common types of cyber attacks include, but are not limited to, phishing, malware (including ransomware), social engineering attacks, and Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service DDoS attacks. Fortunately, there are various Endpoint Security Protection Software Systems—your single source of truth for Endpoint Management and Security.
For example, an Endpoint Security Protection Software like ManageEngine Endpoint Central allows you to manage, monitor, and secure all your endpoints—from onboarding to retirement across your hybrid workplace and heterogeneous OS ecosystems from a single console. Let’s explore some of the best endpoint management steps and security systems.
Understanding What Endpoint Security Protection Entails
Regarding Endpoint Security Protection, the modern business landscape sees increasing cybersecurity risks or threats from increasingly sophisticated hackers. Most Cybercriminals launch attacks every 39 seconds, with a daily total of 2,244 attacks. Endpoints are among the most common targets, given the number of them connected to networks.
According to Strategy Analytics insight, there were already 22 billion connected devices in 2018, which is predicted to rise to 38.6 billion by 2025 and 50 billion by 2030. As a result, Verizon’s threat report found that up to 30% of data breaches involved malware being installed on endpoints. Major corporations are prime targets for attackers attempting to cause data breaches.
This data can still be resold on underground markets because they offer a large payload that includes millions of users’ personal and financial information, such as login credentials and credit card numbers. However, attackers target anyone and everyone they can extract data from. All personal or confidential data is valuable to cybercriminals.
As per Fortinet, Endpoint Security Protection is the safeguarding of devices like workstations, servers, and other devices (that can accept a security client) from malicious threats and cyberattacks. Usually, robust security solutions enable businesses to protect devices that employees use for work purposes or servers on a network or in the cloud from cyber threats.
How Endpoint Security Protection Impacts Cloud Attacks
The impact of a cloud-based cyberattack can be far-reaching and devastating for businesses. One of the most significant impacts is economic costs, as cyberattacks can result in the loss of revenue, increased expenses for remediation and recovery, and supply chain disruption. In addition, some cyberattacks can also impact brand reputation. Most organizations suffer from data breaches.
Some may also face a temporary outage, or their brand image may be affected — resulting in poor media coverage and the potential loss of current and future customers to competitors. Additionally, cyberattacks can result in regulatory costs, as companies may face fines for failing to protect user data by data protection laws such as the GDPR or HIPAA.
Various vulnerability exploits may happen through a web browser like Mozilla Firefox. As such, organizations can use endpoint protection software to enforce security policies, detect attacks, prevent data loss, and block in-progress attacks. Because endpoints connect to internal corporate networks, endpoint protection is also essential to network security and the general organization.
There are many facets to endpoint security protection, as threats can come from various places. Cyber threats come in multiple forms, with different methods, targets, and purposes. Today, given the ever-evolving cloud computing technology space, most businesses and organizations often face some of the most common threats in their operations.
Some Include:
- Malware: This is often software designed to disrupt the normal operations of a device and can refer to a wide range of attacks like worms, Trojans, adware, or spyware.
- Ransomware: A type of malware that locks computer files until the victim pays a ransom fee, with attackers’ goals ranging from purely monetary to taking the network offline.
- Social Engineering: Social Engineering Attacks through email sometimes result in users opening malicious files or links. These attacks manipulate victims into handing over sensitive information for malicious purposes like fraud or account takeover.
- Phishing: These attacks trick victims into sharing usernames, passwords, card numbers, bank account information, or other sensitive data.
- DDoS: Malicious attempts to disrupt traffic flow to a server or network by overwhelming the targeted infrastructure with a flood of traffic, rendering it non-operational.
Other common Cyber Security Threats include compromised USB devices, security threats from shared file drives, downloads, and usage of unsecured applications. At the same time, some of the most common endpoint threat vectors that exist today keep evolving. According to Cloudflare, Cybersecurity is essential because it allows you to reduce risk so businesses can remain operational.
Also, Cybersecurity helps you be good stewards of your users’ data and privacy, prevent revenue loss, and avoid regulatory consequences. Endpoint protection focused on malware detection and prevention through anti-malware or antivirus software. Still, today, it has also expanded to address these other ‘threat vectors‘ — this means a source or channel from which an attack can come.
How Endpoint Security Protection Software Mitigate Risks
In layman’s language, web application security protects websites, applications, and APIs from attacks. It is a broad discipline that aims to keep web applications functioning smoothly and protect businesses from cyber vandalism, data theft, unethical competition, and other negative consequences. The global nature of the Internet exposes web applications and APIs to massive attacks.
Especially from many locations and various levels of scale and complexity. As such, web application security encompasses a variety of strategies and covers many parts of the software supply chain. Web applications may face several attack types depending on the attacker’s goals, the nature of the targeted organization’s work, and the application’s particular security gaps.
There are many other notable joint attacks that Endpoint Security Protection Software helps mitigate. For instance, we may consider the attack surface misconfiguration process. An organization’s attack surface is its entire IT footprint. This means everything that could be susceptible to cyberattacks: servers, devices, SaaS, and cloud assets accessible from the Internet.
Its surface can remain vulnerable to attack due to certain elements being overlooked or misconfigured. Next, sometimes, development teams work quickly to meet business objectives, frequently building and publishing APIs without informing security teams. These unknown APIs may expose sensitive company data, operating in the “shadows” silently. Below are other joint attacks.
Common Threats:
1. Zero-Day Attacks
The Zero-Day Exploit is a vulnerability unknown to an application’s makers and thus does not have a fix available. We now see more than 20,000 every year. Attacks look to exploit these vulnerabilities quickly and often follow up by seeking to evade protections put in place by security vendors.
2. Cross-Site Scripting
Realistically, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to inject client-side scripts into a webpage to access important information directly, impersonate the user, or trick the user into revealing crucial information.
3. SQL Injection
In a SQL Injection (SQi) attack, an attacker exploits vulnerabilities in how a database executes search queries. Attackers use SQi to gain access to unauthorized information, modify or create new user permissions, or otherwise manipulate or destroy sensitive data.
4. DoS And DDoS Attacks
Next, Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are widespread. Through various vectors, attackers can overload a targeted server or its surrounding infrastructure with different attack traffic. When a server can no longer process incoming requests effectively, it begins to behave sluggishly and eventually deny service to incoming requests from legitimate users.
5. Memory Corruption
Memory corruption occurs when a location in memory is unintentionally modified, resulting in the potential for unexpected behavior in the software. Bad actors will attempt to sniff out and exploit memory corruption through exploits such as code injections or buffer overflow attacks.
6. Buffer Overflow
In most cases, Buffer Overflow is an anomaly when software writes data to a defined space in memory known as a buffer. The overflowing of the buffer’s capacity results in adjacent memory locations being overwritten with data. This behavior can be exploited to inject malicious code into memory, potentially creating a vulnerability in the targeted machine.
7. Cross-Site Request Forgery
At the same time, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) involves tricking a victim into making a request that utilizes their authentication or authorization. By leveraging the account privileges of a user, an attacker can send a request masquerading as the user. Once a user’s account has been compromised, the attacker can exfiltrate, destroy, or modify important information. Highly privileged accounts such as administrators or executives are commonly targeted.
8. Credential Stuffing And Page Scraping
Attackers may use bots to quickly input large numbers of stolen username and password combinations into a web application’s login portal. If this practice gives the attacker access to a real user’s account, they may rob the user’s data or make fraudulent purchases in the user’s name. Attackers may also use bots to steal content from web pages on a large scale. They may use this content to gain a pricing advantage over a competitor, imitate the page owner for malicious purposes, or other reasons.
9. API Abuse
APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are software that allows two applications to communicate. Like any software, they may have vulnerabilities that allow attackers to send malicious code into one of the applications or intercept sensitive data as it moves from one application to another. This is an increasingly common attack type as API use increases. The OWASP API Top Ten list succinctly summarized key API security risks organizations face today.
10. Third-Party Code Abuse
Many modern web applications use various third-party tools — for example, an eCommerce Website using a third-party payment processing tool. Suppose attackers find a vulnerability in one of these tools. In that case, they may be able to compromise the tool and steal the data it processes, prevent it from functioning, or use it to inject malicious code elsewhere in the application. Magecart attacks, which skim credit card data from payment processors, are examples of this attack. These attacks are also considered to be browser supply chain attacks.
The Powerful Anti-Malware Or Antivirus Software Security Roles
Anti-malware (or antivirus) software has long been essential to endpoint protection. Anti-malware detects malware using four main methods.
They are as follows:
- Signature detection: Signature detection scans files and compares them against a database of known malware.
- Heuristic detection: Heuristic detection analyzes software for suspicious characteristics. Unlike signature detection, this method can identify malware not previously discovered and classified. However, heuristic detection can also result in false positives — instances when regular software is mistakenly identified as malware.
- Sandboxing: In digital security, a “sandbox” is a virtual environment quarantined from the rest of a computer or a network. Within a sandbox, anti-malware software can safely open and execute potentially malicious files to see what they do. Any file that performs negative actions, like deleting essential files or contacting unauthorized servers, can be identified as malware.
- Memory analysis: Fileless malware runs on pre-installed software on a device but does not store files. Fileless malware can be detected by analyzing endpoint memory.
Technically, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is an essential endpoint security protection product category that monitors events on endpoints and the network. The features of EDR products vary, but all can collect data about activity on endpoints to help security administrators identify threats. Most can also block threats once they are detected.
Endpoint Security Protection Software uses one of two models:
The client-server model runs on a central server, with client software installed on all endpoints that connect to the network. The client endpoint software tracks activity and potential threats on the endpoint device and reports to the central server. Usually, the client software can isolate or eliminate active threats if needed — for instance, by uninstalling or isolating malware on an endpoint or blocking the endpoint from accessing the network.
In the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, a cloud provider hosts and manages the endpoint software. As is usually the case with cloud computing services, SaaS endpoint software offers the advantage of scaling up more quickly than the client-server model. SaaS-based endpoint software can also send updates to and receive alerts from endpoints even when not connected to the corporate network.
Endpoint Security Protection is essential for individual consumers but typically does not require dedicated endpoint security software. The Operating System (OS) for many users has crucial security protections already installed (such as anti-malware). Thus, users can follow certain best practices to protect their computers, smartphones, and Internet activities.
Mind you, there are some typical endpoint security capabilities worth mentioning.
They Include:
- Anti-malware: One of the most critical components of endpoint security is anti-malware or antivirus software, which detects if malicious software is present on a device. Once seen, several actions are possible: the anti-malware can alert the central server or the IT team that an infection is present, it can attempt to quarantine the threat on the infected endpoint, it can try to delete or uninstall the malicious file, or it can isolate the endpoint from the network to prevent lateral movement.
- Encryption: Encryption is the process of scrambling data so it cannot be read without the correct decryption key. Encrypting the contents of an endpoint device protects data on the endpoint if the device is compromised or physically stolen. Endpoint security can encrypt files on the endpoint or the entire hard disk.
- Application control: Application control allows IT administrators to determine which applications employees can install on endpoints.
Endpoints on a network are likely to include personal smartphones and tablets and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which run a wide variety of software and hardware. You can learn more about IoT Security to gather helpful information.
Why Endpoint Security Protection Is Important For Cloud Businesses
Endpoint security is a more significant issue for businesses, especially those that manage hundreds or thousands of employee endpoint devices. An insecure endpoint can be a foot in the door for attackers attempting to break into an otherwise secure corporate network. The more endpoints connecting to a network, the greater the potential risks.
As well as vulnerabilities introduced to that network — just as more cars on the road increase the likelihood that a driver will make a mistake and cause an accident. In addition, the potential impact of a successful attack on a business can be huge, resulting in a disruption of business processes, the loss of confidential data, or a damaged reputation.
What also makes endpoints an enticing target is that they can be challenging to keep secure. IT teams do not have regular, direct access to employees’ computers. They may also lack direct access to devices like laptops and smartphones. By requiring the installation of endpoint protection software on devices that connect to a network, IT can remotely manage them.
They can also easily monitor the security of these devices. On the one hand, the number of devices that connect to each network and the variety of devices has increased. On the other hand, securing endpoint devices has become far more challenging with the increase in BYOD (Bringing-Your-Own-Device) environments over the last decade.
How Endpoint Security Protection Relates To Network Security
The Endpoint is the first Security stop. It helps keep networks secure since an unsecured endpoint provides a weak spot in a network for an attacker to exploit. But network security also includes protecting and securing network infrastructure, managing network, cloud, and Internet access, and other aspects not covered by most endpoint security products.
Today, the lines between endpoint and network security are blurring. Many organizations are moving to a Zero Trust model for network security, which assumes any endpoint device may pose a threat and must be verified before it can connect to internal resources — even SaaS applications. With such a model, endpoint security posture becomes an essential tool.
In particular, it allows for secure network and cloud access. It also protects all your traditional and mobile endpoint devices with innovative technologies for attack surface reduction, attack prevention, breach prevention, and detection and response. All this security protection is empowered by a Secure Global Intelligence Network, one of the largest in the world.
A single-agent solution delivers flexible management/deployment options, including fully cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid. Compromised endpoints are highly disruptive to business. Some single agent/cloud console architecture simplifies management and strengthens your overall endpoint security posture. Several security best practices can be applied.
For Individuals:
- Use strong passwords
- Do not reuse the same passwords for different websites or apps
- Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or 2FA whenever possible
- Avoid unsecure websites (many browsers will warn you if you are about to visit an unsecured website, or look for a padlock in the URL bar at the top to make sure the website uses TLS for encryption and authentication)
- Do not download or open unfamiliar files or links
- Know the signs of a phishing email
Employees access data and applications from billions of devices with different capabilities, applications, and operating systems. Endpoint Security is the critical last line of defense in preventing cyber attacks from compromising those devices and protecting sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. That’s why you need the best data protection tool.
For Businesses:
- Enforce the above for all of your users
- Have visibility into all infrastructure used in your organization, including Shadow IT
- Use DDoS protection to remain online
- Use firewalls and WAFs to protect internal networks and external-facing websites
- Encrypt and back up data
- Find a third-party risk management solution to implement a Zero-Trust approach.
Full-blown breaches are the worst nightmare for CISOs. As such, a robust security solution offers threat detection and remediation with sophisticated attack analytics and automated response. Such systems provide the most vital protection against stealthy malware, ransomware, credential theft, living off-the-land attacks, Active Directory credential theft, and more.
ManageEngine Endpoint Security Protection Solutions
On the one hand, ManageEngine is a creative and innovative Endpoint Security Protection Software System that helps you manage a heterogeneous workforce. In addition, with the help of this security software system, you can automate critical endpoint management tasks, secure your endpoints from cyber threats, enhance your employees’ productivity, and more.
As the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corp., ManageEngine empowers you to take control of your IT, from your security, networks, and servers to your applications, service desk, Active Directory, desktops, and mobile devices. They simplify your life with feature-rich, easy-to-use, and integrated software, providing holistic IT management tools.
This unique ManageEngine security software solution accelerates digital transformation, enables remote work, and secures your digital enterprise. As a result, they make your business more stable by serving as a reliable, long-term partner in IT management since 2002 and will be in that arena as long as IT remains relevant to you and your business.
Their tools are built from the ground up with contextual integration to ensure you can control your IT as a holistic environment, not an assortment of disconnected, siloed elements. Check out all the integrations offered by their entire solutions portfolio. They want to make IT simple. And no, they don’t mean limited functionality. They give you full functionality.
Resource Reference: Get Started With ManageEngine Endpoint Central For Free!
Whether responsible for tactical, day-to-day IT management tasks or strategic, long-term IT management planning, you can take control of your IT with ManageEngine. ManageEngine offers over 60 Enterprise IT Management Products and over 60 Free Tools for identity and access management, enterprise service management, and more.
You’ll also get access to unified endpoint management and security, IT operations management, security information and event management advanced IT analytics, and low-code app development. Your deployment options include on-premises, cloud-native, cloud-ready, and MSP models.
The Key Features:
- Automate patch management
- Manage and monitor mobile devices
- Deploy software in a few clicks
- Image and deploy operating systems
- Troubleshoot systems remotely and securely
- Enforce compliance measures across your organization
- Secure your device, applications, and data
- Manage endpoints on the go using our mobile app
ManageEngine is a system laid out simply in a UI that won’t slow you down or trip you up. On top of that, you’ll find that their apps are easy to download, install, configure, and deploy with no third-party support services or help needed. You lie at the heart of their product philosophy. Your needs drive them; they’ve built a strong, in-house R&D team to back that up.
Cloudflare Endpoint Security Protection With Zero Trust
On the other hand, powered by an intelligent global network, the Cloudflare Connectivity Cloud is a unified platform that helps your business work, deliver, and innovate everywhere. Cloudflare runs a global 310-city network that offers many security services, including DDoS Mitigation, a Web Application Firewall, and more.
There is also API Protection, DNSSEC, Managed SSL/TLS, Bot Management, Client-Side Security, etc. Accelerate application and network performance while rapidly developing new applications. Reduce cost and complexity to reinvest resources in your highest priorities. Connect and secure your employees, contractors, devices, networks, apps, and data everywhere they live.
In a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Cloudflare, the research firm found that loss of control leads to consequential impacts on customer experience, employee productivity, time to market, and more. Give your digital products and services top-notch security, reliability, and performance for customers everywhere.
Quickly build and deploy full-stack applications everywhere, thanks to integrated computing systems, storage nodes, and networking channels. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud protects 900+ GPC websites at all costs, giving them complete visibility into threats across their digital footprint. This gives eCommerce businesses resilience during launches and promotions.
Resources:
All Cloudflare services are designed to run from any data center in our network, allowing them to stop attacks close to their source. They’re integrated with our website performance services, so adding new security protections never slows traffic down. In addition, these services work with all kinds of website infrastructure and can often be spun up in minutes.
In a Cloudflare Zero-Trust Model, no endpoint is trusted automatically. Zero Trust requires checking every device for security risks regularly, often on a request-by-request basis. This may involve integrating endpoint security solutions that monitor the endpoint for malware or other risks. Some Zero Trust vendors may provide this natively as well.
Such an approach means that potentially compromised endpoint devices are quickly isolated from the rest of the network, preventing lateral movement. This principle of micro-segmentation is a core facet of Zero Trust security. Learn more about Zero Trust Network or Cloudflare One, which combines networking and security services in one Zero Trust platform.
A 100% Symantec Endpoint Security Protection System
For the second consecutive year, it’s worth noting that Symantec Endpoint Security (SES) Complete achieved perfect scores in SE Lab’s Enterprise Advanced Security Annual Test for Detection. SE Labs tests expose leading endpoint cybersecurity products to a wide array of exploits, fileless attacks, and malware, comprising the broadest range of threats in any currently available public test.
All the attack types present in the test have been witnessed in recent real-world attacks. Further details about this test are described in the SE Labs 2023 annual report. SES Complete’s defense-in-depth and cross-control point visibility stood out in the test and strengthened Symantec’s performance, reflected in receiving the highest score possible.
SE Labs, which specializes in testing advanced threat detection, uses real-world attacks to test threat response on every layer of the attack chain in an MITRE ATT&CK-style format. For this reason, organizations across the globe rely on SE Lab’s tests to aid in selecting endpoint security solutions. Such an Endpoint Detection and Response product is significant.
It’s more than antivirus software, so advanced testing is crucial. Testers must emulate real attackers and follow each step of an attack to understand the capabilities of EDR security products. Symantec is committed to rigorous, real-world testing. They demonstrate their broad data integration and detection capabilities and the value they bring to customers.
The Notable Data Breaches And Cloud Security Strategies
The Equifax data breach in 2017 is one prominent example of a large-scale one. Equifax is an American credit bureau. Between May and June 2017, malicious parties accessed private records of nearly 150 million Americans, about 15 million British citizens, and about 19,000 Canadian citizens within Equifax’s servers. The attack was made pretty possible.
This is simply because Equifax had not applied a patch to a software vulnerability in their system. Equally important, it’s worth mentioning that smaller-scale data breaches can also have a significant effect. In 2020, attackers hijacked the Twitter accounts of numerous famous and influential people. The attack was possible because of an initial social engineering attack.
These attacks enabled the attackers to access Twitter’s internal administrative tools. From this initial breach, attackers could take over multiple people’s accounts and promote a scam that collected approximately $117,000 in Bitcoin. One of the most notorious data breaches of recent decades was the cyber-attack launched against major retailer Target in 2013.
The combination of strategies used to pull this attack off was pretty sophisticated. The attack involved a social engineering attack, the hijacking of a third-party vendor, and a large-scale attack on physical point-of-sale devices. The attack was initiated with a phishing scam that went after employees of an air-conditioning company that provided AC units to Target stores.
Resource Reference: The Topmost Website Cybersecurity Threats Management Strategies
These air conditioners were linked to computers on Target’s network to monitor energy usage, and the attackers compromised the air-conditioning company’s software to gain access to the Target system. Eventually, the attackers could reprogram credit card scanners in Target stores to provide attackers with customer credit card data.
These scanners were not connected to the Internet but were programmed to periodically dump saved credit card data into an access point monitored by the attackers. The successful attack compromised an estimated 110 million Target customers’ data. Since data breaches come in so many forms, there is no single solution to stop them, and a holistic approach is required.
As mentioned, web application security is a broad, always-changing discipline. As such, the discipline’s best practices change as new attacks and vulnerabilities emerge. But the modern Internet threat landscape is active enough that no organization will be able to get by without certain ‘table stakes’ security services that map to their business’s specific needs:
Vital Strategies:
- DDoS Mitigation: DDoS mitigation services sit between a server and the public Internet, using specialized filtration and highly high bandwidth capacity to prevent surges of malicious traffic from overwhelming the server. These services are essential because many modern DDoS attacks deliver enough malicious traffic to overcome even the most resilient servers.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF): This helps filter out traffic known or suspected of exploiting web application vulnerabilities. WAFs are essential because new vulnerabilities emerge too quickly and quietly for nearly all organizations to catch on their own.
- API Gateways: These help identify overlooked ‘shadow APIs’ and block traffic known or suspected to target API vulnerabilities. They also help manage and monitor API traffic. Learn more about API Security to gather more helpful information.
- DNSSEC: This protocol guarantees that a web application’s DNS traffic is safely routed to the correct servers so an on-path attacker does not intercept users.
- Encryption Certificate Management: A third party manages critical elements of the SSL/TLS encryption process, such as generating private keys, renewing certificates, and revoking certificates due to vulnerabilities. This removes the risk of those elements going overlooked and exposing private traffic.
- Bot Management: It uses Machine Learning (ML) and other specialized detection methods to distinguish automated traffic from human users and prevent the former from accessing a web application.
- Client-Side Security: This checks for new third-party JavaScript dependencies and third-party code changes, helping organizations catch malicious activity sooner.
- Attack Surface Management: actionable attack surface management tools should provide a single place to map your attack surface, identify potential security risks, and mitigate risks with a few clicks.
As a rule of thumb, website designers and application developers can design and build applications to prevent attackers from accessing private data. Still, they can limit them from fraudulently accessing user accounts and performing other malicious actions. The OWASP Top 10 list captures the most common application security risks developers should know.
How Businesses And Webmasters Can Prevent Data Breaches
Regarding access control, business employers can help combat data breaches by ensuring their employees only have the minimum access and permissions necessary to do their jobs. Likewise, they should encrypt their websites and the data they receive using SSL/TLS encryption. They should also encrypt data at rest when it is stored in their servers or on employees’ devices.
A web application firewall (WAF) can protect a business from several application attacks and vulnerability exploits that aim to create data breaches. It is speculated that an adequately configured WAF would have prevented the major data breach attack on Equifax in 2017. In addition to their web properties, businesses must protect their internal networks from compromise.
Firewalls, DDoS protection, secure web gateways, and data loss prevention (DLP) can all help keep networks safe. Businesses and companies should prepare a response plan to be executed in the case of a data breach to minimize or contain the information leak. For instance, companies should keep backup copies of essential databases.
Remember, social engineering is one of the most prevalent causes of data breaches. As it may, businesses should train employees to recognize and respond to social engineering attacks.
Other Best Practices:
- Requiring input validation: Blocking improperly formatted data from passing through the application’s workflows helps prevent malicious code from entering the application via an injection attack.
- Using up-to-date encryption: Storing user data in an encrypted fashion and using HTTPS to encrypt transmission of inbound and outbound traffic helps prevent attackers from stealing data.
- Offering strong authentication and authorization: Building in and enforcing controls for solid passwords, offering multi-factor authentication options including hard keys, offering access control options, and other practices make it harder for attackers to access user accounts and move laterally within your application fraudulently.
- Keeping track of APIs: Tools exist to identify overlooked ‘shadow APIs’ that could constitute an attack surface, but API security becomes easier when APIs never get ignored in the first place.
- Documenting code changes: This strategy helps security and developer teams fix new vulnerabilities sooner.
Keeping software and hardware up-to-date: Old versions of software are dangerous. Software almost always contains vulnerabilities that, when appropriately exploited, allow attackers to access sensitive data. Software vendors regularly release security patches or new software versions to patch vulnerabilities.
If these patches and updates are not installed, attackers can compromise those systems — as occurred in the Equifax breach. Past a certain point, vendors will no longer support a software product — leaving that software utterly open to whatever new vulnerabilities are discovered.
In Conclusion;
Regarding Endpoint Security Protection, a data breach is the leakage of confidential, private, or otherwise sensitive information into an unsecured environment. A breach can occur accidentally or as a deliberate attack. Millions of people are affected by data breaches yearly. Some breaches range from a doctor accidentally looking at the wrong patient’s chart to a large-scale access.
Such as an attempt to access government computers to uncover sensitive information. It’s worth noting that data breaches are a significant security concern because sensitive data is constantly transmitted over the Internet. This continuous transfer of information makes it possible for attackers in any location to attempt data breaches on almost any person or business they choose.
At the same time, companies worldwide store data in digital form. Usually, the servers that store the data are often vulnerable to various forms of cyber attack. Major corporations are prime targets for attackers attempting to cause data breaches because they offer a large payload. This payload can include millions of users’ personal and financial information.
For example, some standard data information prone to hacking include login credentials and credit card numbers. This data can all be resold on underground markets. However, attackers target anyone and everyone they can extract data from. All personal or confidential data is valuable to cyber criminals — usually, someone will pay for it.
